LLOYD Shapley, who won the Nobel prize for economics in 2012, died on March 12th at the grand old age of 92. He might not have been too pleased about being memorialised on this economics blog; after winning the prize he said "I consider myself a mathematician and the award is for economics. I never, never in my life took a course in economics." If his co-winner, Alvin Roth, was a practical economist, then Mr Shapley was the theoretical mathematician.